View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Cooler than recent runs, but still very calm.
Going into today’s run, I was facing the following:
Four days off (one more than I’d like)
Several nights of mediocre sleep and stress
Still not back into a regular running cadence
And the proof was in the running, with a slower average pace of 5:54/km, my BPM weirdly spiking to 167 at peak around the 2K mark and my average BPM being 154, higher than normal (though the cold might account for some of this).
Despite the mediocre stats, I didn’t have any issues, but I felt the lack of energy in the final km. I wanted to push, but the tank was already empty. Still, considering my worst km was 6:03 (!), the overall average was not that bad.
I also saw my first regular in a while–the spitfire!
Conditions were fine. It was cool, but dry and with little wind. In fact, I almost felt overdressed wearing my running pants and three layers, possibly because the humidity also remained fairly high.
Anyway, it was good to get out. I will try to stick to a more regular routine and hopefully see better stats going forward.
View from the turtle nesting area, post-run.
Stats:
Run 1,008 Average pace: 5:54/km Training status: Productive Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW, short loop) Start: 10:33 a.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 29:37 Weather: Mostly cloudy Temp: 4°C Humidity: 79-77% Wind: light BPM: 154 Weight: 170.1 pounds Total distance to date: 6,870 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (130/201/331)
This translates to about 13 years, or back to 2013. I remember going to the top of a mountain when on vacation in 2017 in Manning Park to get close enough to a massive cellular tower there so I could get a signal on my phone and log that day (we were going up the mountain, anyway). The app later changed so that you could log entries offline and it would sync and keep any streaks intact when you got online again.
But today I’m not logging in, which will end my streak.
MFP is not a bad app (or site) but I’ve fallen into some bad habits with it, shortcutting entries and fudging things for expediency, like a chore to get out of the way as quickly as possible.
The interface is perfectly serviceable, but last year they offered a preview of a new UI that suddenly went away with a “Thanks for your feedback, see you in 2026!” note that suggested the feedback was not kind.
In any event, I am going to try Cronometer again. Its UI is more modern, but perhaps a tad cluttered. I’ll adapt. It integrates nicely with my Garmin watch and scale and gives me a fuller picture than the free version of MFP ever did (most of the useful stuff there is gated behind a subscription). I may even subscribe to Cronometer to see how it goes, despite my general hesitance to subscribe to anything new these days.
By way of comparison, I was tracking my typical breakfast at 380 calories on MFP. Being more precise with my entries on Cronometer, it shows 440 calories and that’s before adding my usual slice of toast and jam, which will bring it to around 560 or so. That’s a notable difference on a daily basis.
If Cronometer doesn’t work out, Garmin offers its own meal-tracking now through Connect+, which is also (surprise) a subscription. We’ll see.
But for now, MFP and my 13-year logging streak, are going away.
I was power-washing some concrete stairs in our condo complex this afternoon and when you get to one of the corners of a step, it’s surprisingly tricky to avoid having the spray bounce back directly at you.
Which it did, multiple times. And with something like 2,500 PSI of force, you definitely notice it. It’s not often my face gets gritty, but it did today.
But a good portion of the steps are clean now, so it was worth it!
Before:
Dirty steps. And a stroller that appeared jusrt as I snapped the photo.
After:
Clean steps! Plus the stroller has returned to the stroller dimension from whence it came.
Where: Iona Beach Regional Park, Richmond Nature House (Richmond), Burnaby Lake (Burnaby) Weather: Sunny, 7-8°C
The forecast was better than expected, with it being sunny right from the start. Nice! The start was a bit late due to two things: waiting to suss out the weather in the early morning, and when I got downtown, we found someone had parked in front of the parking garage of Nic’s apartment building, preventing us from leaving. Nic was just about to conclude the call with the people who would come tow the car when a guy came frantically running toward us, waving an arm and apologizing. He got in the car and left immediately.
We proceeded to Iona Beach, which we haven’t been to since June of last year!
Iona Beach
Looking across the Fraser River at Iona Beach.
The last stretch of road leading to the beach has been repaved, with new bike and pedestrian lanes added, completing the work started with the re-alignment last year of Ferguson Road. There is now full dedicated pedestrian and bike access stretching back to the airport, a huge improvement over what existed before.
We made our way through our usual loop and along the river saw a nice variety of waterfowl, including wigeons, common mergansers, a sunning cormorant and a couple of male buffleheads trying to impress a female. There was also a large congregation of gulls off in the distance. If we squinted our eyes, we could pretend they were snow geese, which we have yet to see this winter.
The main beach had a lot of ex-crabs, even more than usual. Maybe it was Crab Day.
In all, it was nice to be back at Iona Beach. I have no idea why we went over eight months between visits (as a birding duo–Nic has been more recently), but we’ll probably not wait another eight before returning.
Richmond Nature House
Emtpy feeders means no birds!
Nic has a new phone, a Pixel 10, and Google Maps was being rather odd, constantly telling us to make left turns. But then when it made sense to make a left turn (off Westminster Highway, to the nature house) it instead wanted us to go past it and make an illegal U-turn to get there. WTF, as the kids say.
After arriving, I joked that it would be funny if the bird feeders were empty.
The bird feeders were empty.
The trip wasn’t a complete bust, though, as Nic spotted an immature Red-tailed Hawk sitting up in a nearby tree. That, and an Anna’s Hummingbird that was very high up before mockingly flying away, were the only birds we saw.
Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake
A handsome Bufflehead at Piper Spit.
Piper Spit was our last stop, with the light starting to turn golden. There were multiple people feeding the birds. I’m usually pretty chill about this, because people gonna people, but I somehow got triggered by a little girl repeatedly running (and screaming) at the ducks while the nearby adults with her just stood there, talking among themselves. I expressed my thoughts using words that could be heard in a generous perimeter, if you know what I mean (no colourful metaphors, though, except maybe a few shared with Nic as we left).
As for the (well-fed) birds, there were most of the usual gang, along with more Buffleheads, who obligingly came up close, allowing for some great shots of their fuzzy, iridescent heads. Perhaps distracted by food, I observed little drama, though one crow had what appeared to be a generous chunk of pastry in its beak that was being coveted by others.
There were a few dowitchers, but they were mostly in shadow by this time of the day. I mostly shot the Buffleheads.
Overall, a pretty good day, with the weather being much nicer than expected. We’ll get back to Reifel eventually.
The Shots
Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto.
Budding willows at Iona Beach
Looking down the Fraser River
Another shot of the Fraser River, looking west
A poofed-out American Robin
A Bald Eagle looking over the North Jetty at Iona Beach
A pair of Common Mergansers on the beach
Driftwood at Iona Beach
Chopper glare over Iona Beach
Pigeons snoozing on a sign
Empty feeders at Richmond Nature House
An immature Red-tailed Hawk, wondering where the birds went at Richmond Nature House
Female Bufflehead after taking a sip of water
American Coot pondering itself
A crow in mod-step at Piper Spit
A crow, proudly displaying the pastry (?) it found
I am in the hallway of some kind of school, possibly a college or university. For some reason the floor is carpeted. There are several people with me that I know in the dream, but I can’t recall if they were actual or dream people. Doors to nearby classrooms are open. There is a lot of water on the carpet, leaving it quite saturated in some spots. There are some green frogs scattered about, one a fairly big size (for a frog), the others small.
I am wearing blue jeans. I look down at one of my legs and see the jeans are wet. It is not because I failed to get to the loo in time, it’s just water. But from that water emerges a tiny frog, as if manifesting from the frog dimension and onto my leg. It hops onto the floor and joins the other frogs. I see more frogs appear out of the saturated carpet.
Before the frogs can take over the world, which was undoubtedly their plan, I awaken.
The Delivery Van
Or possibly a moving van, but I’m pretty sure it was a delivery van. I am riding shotgun and the driver is a nervous young guy, maybe 18 or 19. We are returning the van to the lot from which it was rented/borrowed. I am aware the van is semi-autonomous, but the kid is driving and in full control.
We get to the lot and there is another similar van there, which becomes relevant shortly.
From a room with large glass windows, almost like a control tower at an airport, a supervisor of some sort guides us in. He tells the kid over the radio to line the van up with some kind of docking mechanism. The important part is, just as the van connects, the kid has to push a comically large button on the dashboard. The kid muffs on the timing and the van fails to dock. This causes it to wheel off back into the lot and somehow it becomes more autonomous and sort of out of control, but very slowly out of control. Think of the steamroller in the first Austin Powers move, like that.
The supervisor from the control room somehow manages to climb into the driver’s side to take over. The kid has either disappeared or got out real quiet-like, making me wonder why I couldn’t have done the same. The other delivery van is kind of looping around us and while it’s not explicitly stated, I understand this is a bad thing.
The supervisor gives me a big key and produces another identical to it. He says we both need to insert our keys into slots on the dashboard at the same time and turn them. “Like firing nukes,” I say, “except we’re the nukes?” He laughs, but in a nervous way.
Sadly, I wake up before finding out what happened next. It’s too bad, because I really wanted to know!
41 apps now need updating. For a while it was 40, then dropped to 39, then went back up to 40, and now it’s 41.
To me, this is the most interesting game I have on my iPhone. How many apps can get queued for updates before something forces itself? I suspect I will find out soon.
In Apple-adjacent news, Jonathan Horst, who got kicked out of Linus Media Group because his YouTube channel Mac Address was too clever and different, is back with a new channel called Think Different. I like his style and approach (though not his newly shorn head). His first video is a delightful rant against Liquid Glass and flat design. Good stuff.
View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Calm, cloudy, but not cold.
My watch suggested a rest day yesterday, so I obeyed it. I then decided to run today for a few reasons:
To minimize the gap between runs (to three days)
The forecast for my usual run day of Friday is poo (well, rain)
So I set off to do a short loop at the lake and fought the urge to do more (I did not do more).
I wore three layers because it was a little cooler and there was a bit of a breeze. This turned out to be OK for the walk to the lake and the run itself, though two layers would have sufficed, but it came in handy on the walk back as I cooled off and the wind picked up again.
As for the run, I chose to go clockwise because I could hear what sounded like wood being cut nearby and I was intrigued. It turned out that half of the Avalon parking lot was closed off for a big ol’ tree chipping ceremony. They were spreading the chips in the forested bit between the parking lot and the trail, maybe as a bed for the bugs and critters or something. I assume the trees being fed into the chipper were sick/dead or had fallen.
Thar she blows!
Possibly due to the cooler temperature, the lack of energizing sunshine or not stretching beforehand (there was clutter in my usual stretching spot and I was too lazy to move the stuff, which is ironic considering I went out and ran 5K immediately after), I was slower, but my pace of 5:46/km is cromulent. I didn’t experience any issues. And the trail was much more sparsely populated compared to Sunday.
In the last km I did something I rarely do–I started to stretch out my gait, effectively speeding up without necessarily putting more energy into the run. I started this with only about 20 seconds left, so it had no effect on my pace, but it felt good and I may experiment more with this in the future.
Overall, a perfectly fine outing.
The lake, post-run. as seen from the turtle nesting area.
Stats:
Run 1,007 Average pace: 5:46/km Training status: Productive Location: Burnaby Lake (CW, short loop) Start: 11:26 a.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 28:59 Weather: Cloudy Temp: 7°C Humidity: 76-73% Wind: light BPM: 151 Weight: 168.8 pounds Total distance to date: 6,865 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (125/193/318)
I was going to post these shots yesterday, but because I had a terrible sleep the night before, then somehow decided it was a good idea to walk 29,000+ steps the next day, I fell asleep instead.
Here they are, using FooGallery’s adorably kitschy Polaroid theme.
When I was at the store, I bought a regular-size Aero bar, because I’d just walked something like 4 km and felt I’d earned the bubbly chocolate calories. But I kept the wrapper in a pocket of my hoodie, because I wanted to enter the calorie particulars into my food total for the day, as I do. If I’m going to indulge, I need to track it!
It was sunny and surprisingly warm wearing my lined hoodie, so I took my hands out of the pockets and just let them hang at my sides, like some clever ape. When I put my hands back in the pockets later, the Aero wrapper was gone. Apparently I’d either pulled it out without noticing, or it had just quietly slipped out on its own.
I thought about retracing my steps, but the wrapper could have been anywhere along a 1+ km route and might have blown onto the road or something, so I just kept walking home, feeling guilty.
And it made me wonder, how much litter is accidental? Maybe not a lot, but I know for sure now that some of it is.
In the meantime, enjoy this 1976 McDonald’s anti-litter commercial. I remember this!
A toot is what some people call posts on Mastodon, the federated, decentralized social media service (and the only social media I check in on anymore). I saw this today, found it delightful and I am sharing it here, as the tenets of social media dictate:
Oh, and a link, too:
My favorite kinds of toots:
– I thought this was interesting. – I went outside, this is what I saw. – I’m making something. – I’m trying something new. – This is my jam. (Any kind of jam.) – I made a thing and I’m proud! – I’m bad at it a thing, but I’m sharing anyway! – This is my important animal or person. – Whimsical shitpost. – Real life mundane thing.— Steven Hoefer (@troublewithwords@wandering.shop)
